The World Wide Web puts more material at your fingertips than any human being has ever had throughout all of history. Trouble is, all that material isn't necessarily good material. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff - what's valid information from what's not so trustworthy?

This is what we call assessment: deciding what information is valid and what isn't. It depends on critical thinking and knowing whom to trust. We'll look first at critical thinking, then focus on five ways we can judge Web-based information. Finally, we'll talk about sources we can trust to help us find the valid information.

What we call critical thinking is a combination of sound logic and solid background information. When we venture out looking for information in territories we know nothing about, we need to be very careful, especially when the information we're looking for will affect our life, health, or safety.

How do we know the "genuine article" from a fake when we're in a totally strange territory? We need to apply critical thinking, know whom we can trust, and avoid the common pitfalls.

Trust is a matter of experience and authority. Why do we trust people in real life...? Usually, it's either because we've decided, or someone we already trust has recommended them.

We decide on our own because...

When we decide on our own that we can trust someone, it's either because long experience with that person has shown they are trustworthy, or because they share the characteristics of trustworthy people we've known.

Can we base our judgment of Websites on either experience or characteristics? Certainly.

• Experience is a vital part of critical thinking. We need to apply our knowledge of how the world works to our judgment of Websites. If we know anything related to what we're looking for, we should apply it. Is what we're reading reasonable? Does it contradict something we know to be true? Is it logical? The critical areas of accuracy, objectivity, and coverage are based in large part on experience.
• Characteristics of Websites are important - but people often get them wrong. Too often people trust a Website because it looks good, rather than considering deeper characteristics of trustworthiness like objectivity, currency, and coverage.

When someone else says we can trust someone...

Usually we feel we can take the advice of close friends or authorities. Nobody is entirely trustworthy, of course - friends and people in authority have been known to be mistaken or even betray our trust. Because of this, it's often good to get advice from more than one person or organization. Many organizations try to build "checks and balances" into their structure, to help insure trustworthiness.

Of course, this lesson can't tell you which of your friends you can trust, but we'll discuss authority in the next sections.

One common error is to check only one source of information - whether it's a search engine or a direct source of information. Especially in areas we're not familiar with, we need more than one site's say-so.

The most common error people make is to judge a Website by how it looks. This is a bit like trusting a salesman who is well-dressed. Unless you look at his behavior, you won't know if he's honest or a "confidence man". The five critical areas discussed below will help you look for more reliable signs of trustworthiness.

A very interesting study was conducted by Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab, Consumers Union's Consumer WebWatch, and usability consulting firm Sliced Bread Design. Among other things, they tabulated the reasons people gave for trusting a Website. Here are the five top reasons people gave:

What do you think of these results? Is the "design look" the most important indicator of validity? What about "Information Design/Structure" and the other factors people commented on?

Take a look at this study in more detail:

• Abstract
• Full report

Even if you don't know anything about the field of study you're investigating, there are several ways you can tell about the accuracy of a site:

Here are some practical questions you can use to assess accuracy:

• Is the information free of grammatical, spelling, and other typographical errors?
• Is it clear who has the ultimate responsibility for the accuracy of the content of the material?
• Are the sources for any factual information clearly listed so they can be verified in another source?
• Does the information given conflict with facts you know to be true?

The University of Louisville's University Libraries have an Information Literacy Program with good examples of the five critical areas. Look at the examples given at the web site under accuracy: http://library.louisville.edu/infoliteracy/criticalEvaluation.html

What is Authority?

In this sense, authority is 'expert standing' or 'convincing force of argument'. These senses from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary OnLine express what is meant here by authority:

1 c : TESTIMONY : an individual cited or appealed to as an expert
4 a : GROUNDS, WARRANT <had excellent authority for believing the claim>
b : convincing force <lent authority to the performance>

Why do we need Authority?

When we're investigating something we know little or nothing about, we need to rely on authority because we ourselves don't know enough. We need to ask someone who does know. But...is this Website written by people who really know more than we do?

Where does Authority Come From?

A person or organization derives "authority" from one or more of these sources:

• Experience in the field. For example:
  • travel to the region being discussed
  • presence at an event
  • working at the kind of job being discussed
  
  Question: how do we know the person has done what they claim to have done?
  
  
• Successful performance of a skill, such as:
  • successfully building a good house
  • creating a masterpiece of art
  • writing a respected research report
  
  Question: who determines the success of the performance?
  
  
• Testimony of others, for example:
  • Satisfied customers
  • An author's employer
  • An educational institution
  • A government agency
  • A professional organization
  
  Question: how do you know the people or institution that back the information are reliable?
  

Ultimately, we accept the authority of a Website because there seems to be a consensus among people we respect that the information provider(s) are qualified - that they know what they're talking about.

Organizations with Authority

Organizations with true "authority" are set up with a broad base to provide consensus. Their structure includes "checks and balances" to help insure the reliability of their information:

• Educational institutions have both a board of trustees (or regents), often elected, and an external accrediting agency. Each of these scrutinize how the institution operates to make sure sound practices are followed.
• Organizations that put information on the Web usually have people to check the content before it is made public. This is true of larger organizations with well-known reputations; but not necessarily all follow this practice. Part of critical thinking involves finding out about the track-record of organizations that provide information on the Web.
• Publishers - whether of books, journals, or magazines - have editors who read over and correct what authors submit. Many also have outside readers give their opinion. Juried publications send material to several experts in the field (the "jury") for comments about the information; based on these comments, the editor decides whether an article should be published, revised, or rejected. This is the highest level of validation, though it can lead to stifling new ideas.
• Employers in organizations that provide information generally check to make sure their employees are qualified to provide that information. This is a circular process though: are the employers really qualified to decide who is qualified to provide?
• Governments are sometimes set up with checks and balances. This is true of most of the governments in North America and Europe, but not all are necessarily effective in providing reliable information. Each government has to "prove itself" in the arena of information reliability. In general, the bigger the government, the larger the number of areas in which it is credible - but there are some people who don't trust governments of any size or description. Government-provided information needs to be judged on the basis of all five critical areas, just as does information from any other source.

Practical Questions to ask:

• What is the nature and purpose of the page?
• Is it clear who is sponsoring the page?
• Is there a link to a page describing the purpose of the sponsoring organization?
• Is there a way of verifying the legitimacy of the page's sponsor? That is, is there a phone number or postal address to contact for more information? An email address is not enough!
• Is it clear who wrote the material, and are the author's qualifications for writing on this topic clearly stated? Actually, in large organizations the individual author(s) aren't named. This does not necessarily detract from the authority of the information; it often means the entire organization stands behind the information provided.
• If the material is protected by copyright, is the name of the copyright holder given?

Examples at University of Louisville: http://library.louisville.edu/infoliteracy/criticalEvaluation.html#authority

What is Objectivity?

Objectivity is freedom from bias. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary OnLine defines the relevant sense of objective, the adjectival form of the noun objectivity, this way:

3 a : expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations <objective art> <an objective history of the war> <an objective judgment>

Why do we need Objectivity?

There are many factors that can distort the presentation of information. There are even people who say that all facts are distorted in the telling. It is true that every human being's outlook on the world is different to some degree from everyone else's. This is part of the reason why it's so important to check more than one source of information, so we can get as balanced a view as possible.

What are some of the factors that lead to lack of objectivity?

• Commercial interest can lead people to present information in a way that hides other options or potential problems. What are some of the ways you can tell if commercial interest is involved? What sorts of Websites might have commercial interests?
• Desire for power can lead people to misstate facts and hide information. What are some ways you can detect desire for power? Are some types of organization more likely to suffer from this?
• Fear or hatred warps a person's view of the world and can lead to a serious distortion of facts. How can you tell if someone is governed by fear or hatred?
• Belief systems, including religions, philosophies, social movements, political ideologies, and cultures, all have their own, slightly different, viewpoint.
  Here are some examples of belief systems:
  Ask yourself: Is it bad to have a belief system?
  Is there any way to avoid them?
  How can we tell what belief system underlies a particular Website?
  • "Science" or '"empiricism" is a belief that the world can be understood best by observation and experimentation, leading to forming testable ideas about how the world works. Most people in the US and Europe - but not everyone - holds some form of this world view, though many people don't fully understand the scientific world view.
  • Many religions (but not all) center on the idea that there is a power (or powers) greater than humans, and information obtained from them is more reliable than anything we can learn on our own.
  • Some philosophies hold that there is no meaning to life (or beyond life), and no powers greater than human being's feeble abilities. Since in this view everything is meaningless and there are no higher powers, there is no reason to do - or learn - anything beyond what is necessary for comfort. Whatever works toward"'my" comfort and personal safety is valid; nothing beyond that matters. Many people (and Web sites) function in this way without necessarily thinking about out. "Whatever works" is their motto.
  • A belief system, shared by many people at the present time, involves a general reverence for nature and everything "natural". This belief system shares elements of science and religion, and though widely held, is not often carefully thought about.
  • A political belief system that was widely held in the twentieth century (and still has many adherents) is that human actions are based primarily on economics, and that those who control the sources of wealth or productivity should hold the greatest political power.

Practical Questions to ask:

• Is the information provided as a public service?
  • One hint about the nature of a Web site is its top level domain (TLD). It's only a general hint, but it's something you can easily check. A top level domain is the last part of the domain name, like .com, .org, .edu, .gov. This gives a general idea of whether the organization running the Web site is:
    • Commercial (.com)
    • Non-profit (.org)
    • Educational (.edu)
    • Government (.gov)
    • or from a particular country (.us., .uk, .ca, .cn, and hundreds more)
  • TLDs for commercial (.com)and non-profit organizations (.org) are assigned without any kind of background check, so the organizations may or may not be what they claim to be.
  • There are many other TLDs. For more information on domain names, see module NG04c.
• What biases might the author(s) have?Is the information presented in a balanced way?
• If there is any advertising on the page, is it clearly differentiated from the informational content? Or is it blended into the Web page so that casual reader will not notice that the whole page is an advertisement? Or is it likely the advertisers could influence the content of the Web page?
• Is the information presented using neutral words, or using words "loaded" to sway people's opinion?

Examples at University of Louisville: http://library.louisville.edu/infoliteracy/criticalEvaluation.html#Objectivity

What is Currency?

Currency is how current, or up-to-date, the information is.

When do we need Currency?

The need for currency depends on the speed with which information is likely to change. Consider these situations and decide how up-to-date the information needs to be in order to be useful and trustworthy:

• We want to know the position of a tornado that has been reported ten minutes ago to be heading in our direction.
• We want to buy a new computer.
• We need to do a report on the European Union's agricultural subsidy policy.
• We want to find out about the boyhood of the President of the United States.
• We want to know how to take care of a violin.
• We want to find out when William the Conqueror landed in England.

Practical Questions to ask:

• How important is it that the information on the page be written recently?
• Are there dates on the page to indicate when the page was written, first placed on the Web, and last revised?
• Is there an indication that the page has been completed and is not still under construction?
• Are there any other indications that the material is kept current?
• If material is presented in graphs and/or charts, is it clearly stated when the data was gathered?
• If the information is published in different editions, is it clearly labeled what edition the page is from?
• If there is no date shown because the material is from a work which is out of copyright (as is often the case with a dictionary, thesaurus, or govenrment document) has there been an effort to update the material to make it more current?

Examples at University of Louisville: http://library.louisville.edu/infoliteracy/criticalEvaluation.html#Currency

What is Coverage?

In this case, coverage is the amount and depth of information.

How much Coverage do we Need?

The amount of coverage we need depends on what we need the information for. If it's just idle curiosity, shorter is better. If a loved one has a rare disease, we'll want comprehensive coverage and possibly support. If we're doing a report to further our education, it might be somewhere in between.

Practical Questions to ask:

• How technical and detailed do we need the information to be?
• If there is a print equivalent to the Web page, is there a clear indication of whether the entire work is available on the Web or only parts of it?
• The information is technical or detailed enough to meet my information needs, but not overwhelming or confusing?
• Have you found enough information to do what you need to do?

Examples at University of Louisville: http://library.louisville.edu/infoliteracy/criticalEvaluation.html#Coverage

For general information from the Web, it's good to know there's an organization that helps evaluate the more frequently used Websites. That's Consumer WebWatch, a project of Consumers Union: http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/

Since anyone can publish anything on the web, we especially need to evaluate any information that we find that might affect our health and safety.

Health Web Sites: Which ones can you trust?

• HealthFinder: a United States government multi-agency site to help people find reliable health information on the Web. http://www.healthfinder.gov/
• Medical Library Association: You can find a list of the top 10 most useful medical sites as suggested by the at http://www.mlanet.org/resources/medspeak/topten.html
  and a more comprehensive list at the CAPHIS site, http://caphis.mlanet.org/consumer/
• HealthWeb: a U. S. government sponsored list compiled by university medical libraries, http://healthweb.org/

A suggestion:

Become familiar with the better known medical sites, bookmark them, and always return to these sites for your medical needs.

Criteria for Evaluating Internet Health Information

These seven criteria are similar in many ways to the five critical areas we recommend for evaluating general information on the Web. They have been fine-tuned for evaluating medical sites by the Health Summit Working Group.

The HON code

The HON code was developed for medical Web sites. The code is to help users identify reliable and credible medical information on the web. This is worth knowing about.

• Health Information on the Net: http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/
  • Read the introduction page
  • Read the "How it got started" link, select the link from the left column.
  • There is even a HONcodeHunt search - this will help you verify and search for HONcode accredited web sites.

URAC

URAC is "an independent, nonprofit organization, is well-known as a leader in promoting health care quality through its accreditation and certification programs. URAC offers a wide range of quality benchmarking programs and services that keep pace with the rapid changes in the health care system, and provide a symbol of excellence for organizations to validate their commitment to quality and accountability. Through its broad-based governance structure and an inclusive standards development process, URAC ensures that all stakeholders are represented in establishing meaningful quality measures for the entire health care industry."

• URAC home page: http://www.urac.org/
• Read about URAC's mission and history: http://www.urac.org/about/

Drug Information on the Web

Just as general medical information should be evaluated, so should drug information and drug pharmacies on the web. Again, anyone can create a web page, and can sell prescription drugs over the Internet, with or without a license (until they're caught).

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy has created the VIPPS seal of approval for Internet pharmacies. Take a look at the web site below.

• Internet Pharmacy and Online Pharmacies Verification http://www.nabp.net/vipps/
  • Read the information "For consumers" (the link is in the left side column, or http://www.nabp.net/vipps/consumer/faq.asp)
    • Click on the link "List of Pharmacies" for a list of VIPPS approved online pharmacies (or http://www.nabp.net/vipps/consumer/listall.asp)

The government is moving more and more towards making their publications available on the web. Most government publications are not searchable with a search engine since most of their publications are saved as Adobe PDF or some other type file. Print government documents are produced by the Government Printing Office (GPO).

Most government documents do not fall under copyright laws, therefore they can be reproduced in many formats, print and web.

Government Information on the Web

How do you find government publications?

• If you know the agency or government department that has produced the document, search their site first.
  • Use a search engine to locate the appropriate government site, once on the site, look for links that say publications, documents, or reports.
  • For example, for government information on SARS or West Nile Virus, you may want to visit the government site, http://www.cdc.gov Centers for Disease Control
• Search the GPO's site http://www.gpoaccess.gov/
• Use other finding aids available to you. Here are four of the best known:
  • Government InfoMine:
    http://infomine.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/search?category=govpub
  • SearchGov.com: http://www.searchgov.com
  • Documents Center: http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/
  • FedWorld Information Network: http://www.fedworld.gov
  These are web sites that will help you find government publications.